Stone of Contention

This week an archeological discovery came to light that some say throws the resurrection of Christ into question. Several news outlets ran stories on the “mysterious tablet” of stone that appears to date to the years just before the birth of Jesus. But the most fascinating part of the ink-on-stone document is its inscription that allegedly announced the raising of a messiah after three days in the grave. Some say the finding shows that the resurrection of Christ was not a unique idea, and therefore undermines the event’s historicity.

But a few problems immediately come to mind. First, the translation of the stone is far from settled. The crucial section of the inscription—which is said to announce a risen messiah—is smudged, making the meaning of the lines difficult to determine.

Time magazine concludes that the “contentious reading of the 87-line tablet depends on a creative interpretation of a smudged passage, making it the latest entry in the woulda/coulda/shoulda category of possible New Testament artifacts.”

Second, even if the controversial translation holds up under scrutiny, I still don’t see this discovery as a threat to the resurrection. We’ve long known that Christ’s resurrection has antecedents and echoes in other religions. Far from shaking Christian faith such examples were a boon of belief to thinkers like C.S. Lewis who contended that God had placed the story of Jesus in the hearts and cultures of many people. For Lewis the resurrection was “true myth.”

Third, I find it incredibly unlikely that the disciples would have been exposed to the stone document or its ideas. Scholars are placing the tablet with the Dead Sea scrolls, which were produced by a group of ascetic Jews called the Essenes. This cave-dwelling tribe of highly devout Jews was completely detached from mainstream Judaism of the day. They viewed even the strict Pharisees as sell-outs for having any dealings with Rome. Fearing corruption of their religion, the Essenes retreated to the caves at Qumran where they lived like monks, waited for the messiah, copied the Hebrew Bible and wrote other religious documents. I doubt the disciples—who were uneducated tradesmen—would have even been aware of the esoteric documents this reclusive group produced.

Fourth, there’s the possibility that the tablet’s inscription is prescient. Though the Israeli scholar who translated the inscription believes it refers to a military messiah who defied Rome, why couldn’t it be a sort of soft prophecy of Jesus' resurrection? Why has no one discussed that possibility? The Essenes wrote other beautiful passages about messiah such as “He shall heal the badly wounded and make the dead live.” Could it be that God revealed future events to this zealous band of worshipers?

Perhaps only time and more study will tell the true impact of this archeological discovery. But whatever the outcome—as with many other “discoveries” of recent years, biblical truth will stand the test. Some Christians are threatened by any sort of scholarly or archeological inquiry into the origins of Christianity. But I take the opposite tack. We have a historically contingent faith and overwhelming documentation of our faith’s central events. What do we have to hide? Bring on the scrutiny!

Is Christianity Dying?

Ah, the arrogance of the west. When we spot a trend in our culture, we tend to think the whole world will follow suit. Nowhere is this ethnocentricity more evident than when it comes to the topic of religion.

In his book The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Philip Jenkins highlights the tendency of western commentators to make grave intonations about the plight of Christendom. He cites a popular article from The New York Times.

“Visit a church at random next Sunday and you will probably encounter a few dozen people sprinkled thinly over a sanctuary that was built to accommodate hundreds or even thousands. The empty pews and white-haired congregants lend credence to those who argue that traditional religious worship is dying out.”

Many voices echo this refrain. Popular writer John Shelby Spong, who wrote the best-seller Why Christianity must Change or Die, travels widely delivering his grandiose ultimatum to the faithful. Spong declares that unless Christians abandon such beliefs as Jesus' resurrection or the idea of a personal God, Christianity "will soon take its place alongside other ancient religions in the museum."

Scholar Arthur Peacock agrees, insisting that the church drop what he calls "incomprehensible and unbelievable" teachings of supernaturalism in order to be credible to the world.

Jenkins writes that these statements reveal several misperceptions. Contrary to the gloomy forecasts, statistics show that the percentage of Christians, even in the U.S., is holding steady or even rising slightly. Critics tend to focus on declining numbers in high church traditions while ignoring the massive nondenominational congregations springing up across the country. They also overlook something else: the majority of earth's population. Jenkins writes:

“Viewed from Cambridge or Amsterdam, such pleas make excellent sense, but in the context of global Christianity, this kind of liberalism looks distinctly dated. It would not be easy to convince a congregation in Seoul or Nairobi that Christianity is dying, when their main concern is building a worship facility big enough for the 10,000 or 20,000 members they have gained over the past few years. And these new converts are mostly teenagers and young adults, very few with white hair. Nor can these churches be easily told that, in order to reach a mass audience, they must bring their message more into accord with western secular orthodoxies.”

A brief survey of second and third world countries (or as some say the "majority world") reveals an explosion of Christian vitality not seen since the earliest days of the faith. Just look at the statistics.

· In 1900 less than 10 percent of Africans were Christians. Today the number has surged to over 47 percent.

· In 1949 China had only 4 million Christians. Today the number stands at about 82 million. That's over a 20x increase, even factoring in the country's total population growth. Former Beijing bureau chief for Time magazine David Aikman projects that within a few decades 1 in 3 Chinese could be Christian.

· Christian faith is also on the rise in South America. Many South American countries report a catholic majority and a charismatic form of Protestantism is growing most quickly, sweeping whole cities with revival.

· The spread of the faith in Korea has been just as astounding. Forget Saddleback. Seoul is now home to the world's largest church. And Korean Christians are not content with mere domestic growth. Christianity Today reports that now "Korea sends more missionaries than any country but the U.S. And it won't be long before it is number one."

Even with this veritable florescence of Christianity, right now somewhere in America a professor is sketching out the soon-ending "Christian Era" before a class of credulous freshmen. On some radio show there's an "expert" opining about the decline of Christendom.

And meanwhile thousands are hearing the gospel for the first time and responding in faith.

Of course we Christians aren't surprised. We remember that someone else made a prediction long ago. Standing before his disciples with fire in his eyes Jesus promised to build his church. The gates of hell couldn't stop it, he told them. Nothing could. Nearly 2,000 years later 2 billion people the world over claim to follow the Carpenter from Nazareth. I guess He wasn't kidding.

Are All Religions Basically the Same?

You've probably heard some form of the following sentiment: When you strip away the rites and rituals, all religions are basically the same.

It sounds nice. Polite. Inoffensive. Politically correct. But, of course, it’s dead wrong.

We evangelical Christians understand this. Our very claim that Christ is the Truth implies that Christianity is unique. But even in academia—where Christian faith is certainly not the norm—the belief that all religions are the same has been largely abandoned. Scholars of comparative religion almost unanimously agree that the world’s major religions differ in important and irreconcilable ways.

For instance, who could argue that Islam and Buddhism are essentially the same? Islam is fiercely monotheistic. Buddhism, on the other hand, has no conception of a god, except as an impersonal force. The central injunction for Muslims is obedience. The goal for Buddhists is enlightenment. Then there’s Christianity. The doctrine of grace—which is central to Christian faith—has no parallel in any other system of belief. Once you start examining religions closely, the differences come to light fairly quickly. In his classic book Christianity and World Religion Norman Anderson writes, “Even the most cursory examination of the theology of different religions reveals far more contradiction than consensus.”

Given the sharp contrasts between religions, I’m always amazed to hear people opine confidently that they are really all the same. Even such comments as “all paths lead to God” strike me as bizarre. How can all paths lead to God when all of those paths define God in radically different ways and some paths don’t even believe in Him!

The tendency to lump all religions together is often what causes people to balk at the exclusive claims of the Christian faith. If all religions are basically the same, why embrace Christianity? Perhaps we need to draw attention to the fact that religions actually differ dramatically and carefully delineate our faith’s unique beliefs. At least then people will not dismiss Christ as just one face in a pantheon of homogenous deities. Understanding the differences, they will see the need to make a choice.

The End of Spanking?

Spanking is so passé. At least the Council of Europe (a 47-country body that promotes civil liberties) hopes it will be soon.

The group has launched a campaign to abolish parental “smacking” the world over by 2009. That’s quite an ambitious goal, and, it seems to me, a strange one. Whatever your views on spanking, wouldn’t it be better to use a concerted, international movement to target child sex traffickers before setting your sites on parents who favor corporal discipline?

A recent article “Spare the Rod, Say Some” from The Economist heralded the campaign and the proliferation of anti-spanking laws across the pond as evidence that spanking is headed for the history books.

“A consensus against hitting children is clearly gathering momentum in the developed, law-governed parts of the world. Also growing is the belief that a light parental cuff and serious forms of child abuse are points, albeit quite far apart, on the same spectrum. Some parents may still insist that their right to dissuade a toddler from doing very dangerous things is also worth protecting; but they are losing the argument.”

As the article repeatedly points out, soon the only wealthy country where parents will be permitted to spank will be the United States, which the writer portrays as the last backward bastion for practitioners of the barbaric practice.

At the risk of offending European progressives, I’d like to put in my vote for keeping spanking legal. I think it’s just gotten a bad rap. Maybe I believe in spanking because I myself was spanked as a child. My father always did it in love and never in anger, which I think is the key for defending the embattled discipline.

Most of the arguments against spanking turn out to be straw man fallacies. They lump all manner of physical abuse—cuffing, slapping, shaking and battering—in with the practice and then attack it. But of course, any honest treatment of the subject will differentiate between cruel mistreatment and loving, restorative physical discipline. Christians who believe in spanking as a legitimate form of punishment should make the distinction clear. After all, the same Scriptures that instruct us not to “spare the rod” also command us to love our children and to not “exasperate” them.

The Economist may be right. The tide may turn on spanking, even in the United States. But wherever the practice is still lovingly carried out, I believe children will be better for it.

Chapman Family Update

Last week I wrote about the tragic death of Steven Curtis Chapman's five-year-old daughter, Maria Sue. For those of you praying for the family I wanted to provide this update. It's from a close friend of the Chapman family. Keep praying for them. I know our prayers have made a difference.

"Everyone wants to know...how are they doing? I understand the question. So many care so deeply, so many can't imagine this loss. But the question is unanswerable, really. I think Caleb did it best when he said at the visitation and at the funeral that the best term he can find is 'confused' ... Read the Rest of the update

A Modern-Day Apostle Paul

It's not everyday you talk to a modern-day Apostle Paul. But that's how I felt after interviewing Joel Stockstill, a youth leader from Baton Rouge, LA.

The guy is absolutely crazy—in a good way.

Back in 2001 when Stockstill took over the youth ministry at Bethany World Prayer Center in Baton Rouge, LA, the church’s 70 kids quickly grew to 1000. But Stockstill wasn’t satisfied.

“Lord this isn’t what you promised us!” he remembers crying out in prayer.

Stockstill wasn’t focused on numbers. He just felt that God had promised him that 20,000 young people would get saved and join the youth group.

They didn’t have a big budget, but the group fell to their knees in prayer. Months later the group ballooned to 2000. By 2006 they had grown to 6000. Today they are past 7000. And the growth shows no signs of stopping. In the week before we spoke 147 kids had been saved. The week before that 262 came to Christ.

I’m sure a lot of people thought Stockstill was crazy when he announced that God wanted to bring in 20,000 young people. They’re probably not thinking that anymore.

And here’s the really crazy part. Stockstill is also a modern-day Job. His voice broke as he told me about how he lost his young wife, Amy, to cancer last year. He’s suffered with major health issues too. He feels that the enemy has targeted his family because of what’s happening at Bethany.

And yet he keeps going, broken yet bold, rocked by tragedy but still ministering to young people with every fiber of his being.

Talking to him put my puny problems in perspective and inspired me to serve God with all my heart. Thanks, Joel.

Pray For Steven Curtis Chapman

This morning as I scanned the CNN headlines, one story caught my eye: "Christian Singer's Daughter Killed by Car."

The Christian singer was Grammy-winning musician, Steven Curtis Chapman. His 5-year-old daughter, Maria Sue, was hit in the driveway of the family’s home yesterday afternoon by an SUV driven by her teenage brother. She was pronounced dead later at the hospital.

Maria Sue was the youngest of three children that the Chapmans adopted from China. They also have biological children. In recent years Chapman had become known as an advocate for international adoption. He and his wife even created Shaohannah's Hope, a foundation and ministry to financially assist thousands of couples in adoption. Those closest to the Chapmans talk of Steven’s love for children, a passion that far exceeds his love of music. Chapman’s recent hit song, "Cinderella," was about the father-daughter relationship.

I can’t imagine what the Chapman family is going through at this point. But I wanted to encourage all the readers of this blog to lift them up in prayer today. Pray for Steven and his wife Mary Beth. And please pray for their teenage son involved in this terrible accident. I’m trusting that God can bring something meaningful out of this dark tragedy.

In lieu of flowers, the Chapmans request any gifts be directed to Shaohannah’s Hope, according to the Steven Curtis Chapman web site. To express condolences click here. By mail, send to P.O. Box 150156 Nashville, TN 37215.